Professor Mark P. McKenna, a leading intellectual property scholar, is joining the UCLA Institute for Technology, Law & Policy as Faculty Co-Director. Professor McKenna will round out a leadership team for the new interdisciplinary center that includes Faculty Co-Director John Villasenor, a professor of engineering and public policy, and Michael Karanicolas, the Executive Director.

Professor McKenna is widely published on a range of intellectual property and technology law topics. Although his core expertise is in trademark law, his research interests also include privacy, copyright, design patent, the right of publicity, and more general inquires into the regulation of new technologies.

“Mark’s broad expertise across a number of different thematic areas, and his specific experience in the pedagogy of tech law, will both be tremendous assets to ITLP’s continued development,” said Michael Karanicolas. “Mark is already making his presence felt in our planning and programming, and we are enormously excited to have him on board.”

Professor McKenna was previously Faculty Co-Director of the Ziffren Institute for Entertainment, Media, Technology & Sports Law, in which he will remain an active participant. Prior to joining UCLA, Professor McKenna was a faculty member at the Notre Dame Law School, where he was Director of the Law School’s Intellectual Property & Technology Law Program and the founding Director of the University’s Technology Ethics Center, a campus-wide, multi-disciplinary program. He has also been a faculty member at the Saint Louis University School of Law, and a visiting professor at Stanford Law School, the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, the Munich Intellectual Property Law Center, and the Turin University-WIPO Master of Laws in Intellectual Property Program. Professor McKenna is also a co-founder of, and Of Counsel to, Lex Lumina PLLC. He previously practiced with the Chicago firm of Pattishall, McAuliffe, Newbury, Hilliard & Geraldson, where he focused primarily on intellectual property litigation and counseling. Professor McKenna graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1997 with a degree in Economics and earned his J.D. from the University of Virginia School of Law in 2000.